108 MALAY POISONS AND CHARM CUBES 



Herbal." Both are used in the treatment of diseases 

 of women. One is the " Stinking Arrach of dunghills, 

 and the other Garden or Sweet Bazil." Concerning 

 the latter, the author says : " Being applied to the 

 place bitten by venomous beasts, or stung by a wasp or 

 hornet, it speedily draws the poison to it. Every like 

 draws its like, Mizaldus affirms, that being laid to rot 

 in horse-dung, it wull breed venomous beasts, Hilarius, 

 a French physician, affirms upon Ins ovm knowledge, 

 that an acquaintance of his, by common smelling to it, 

 had a scorpion breed in his brain. Something is the 

 matter, this herb and rue will never grow together, no,, 

 nor near one another ; and we know rue is as great an 

 enemy to poison as any that grows. To conclude ; 

 it expelleth both birth and after birth ; and as it 

 helps the deficiency of Venus in one kind, so it 

 spoils all her actions in another. I dare write no 

 more of it," 



In the *' mystic square " are the Arabic names of the 

 constellations, which Mr. Worthington surmises were 

 written on each square of the original diagram in the 

 order of the knight's move. The diagram is not 

 coloured as in some magic squares, because in Malay 

 chess the queen always stands on the right of the king, 

 so in this case no colom-s are required ; but as there 

 are eight possible starting points for the knight *s first 

 movej and at least two ways round the board for each, 

 it is essential to know the key. The great variety of 

 ways in which the knight's tour may be accomplished 

 and the harmonious order of its march is described in 

 Falkener's " Games Ancient and Oriental " (1892). 

 There is another diagram in the old book of sixty-four 

 squares with one square blank, one of 256 squares, 

 and one of forty-nine squares with weu^d figures for 

 each day of the week. A series of scribe's errors 



